The Mudcat Café TM
Thread #46932   Message #2262010
Posted By: GUEST
14-Feb-08 - 03:26 AM
Thread Name: Child's Game: Elastics
Subject: RE: Child's Game: Elastics
I used to play this in Brisbane, Australia back in the early 90s. The rhymes I can remember are:

England
Ireland
Scotland
Wales
Inside
Outside
Inside
Out

Banana, Banana, Banana, in
Banana, banana, banana, out
Banana, banana, banana, on
Banana, banana, banana, out
(On banana, you straddle one elastic - ie one leg in, one leg out, so that you are juming to and fro over the elastics, on "in" you jump inside the elastic, the first "out" involves straddling the elastic with both legs out, whereas the last out was jumping clear of the elastic to finish. Oh and "on" meant you had to land on the elastics.

Cats (straddle one elastic) in (both legs in)
Dogs (straddle the other elastic) out (both legs out)
In out in on
Out twist (jump, straddle the elastic and twist so that it gets twisted around your legs) out

In on in out (jump clear of the elastics to start/finish position), out (straddle both elastics) twist out (back to start/finish position)

OK, it turns out that it's harder to explain this than I thought. Hope you get the general idea. If anyone has any more rhymes, I'd love to hear them. I teach in Japan and elastics sounds like the perfect way to get my kids revved up! And it's a bonus that they only need to know about 10 words all together!